Paper Makes the World Go 'Round
by Allagenda-domsitzers-chan
Summary: Just a collection of oneshots and things on MC. Some are related to my Exception thingamajig, others not. 1- Why is the Nether Portal a mile out from the village? Because children. Obviously.


Portal

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A/N: ...sideslot one, I'm tired, and damn am I incoherent when I'm sleepy.

So here's what the idea was- why is Steve's village Nether portal a mile out? What was the accident?

Enjoy.

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In the middle of the night, it wasn't all too uncommon to see doors opening, parents coming out to enjoy some alone time.

What was uncommon was a boy of around eight walking out, holding a wooden sword and a pickaxe that was almost as heavy as he was.

Biting his lip, the boy looked around for anyone that could be out. He saw noone, and crept slowly through his village.

He'd heard stories for all his life about how the Nether was dangerous, full of lava and fire and mobs. But the thought of what it could look like, and the mobs that lived there took over the young boy's thoughts. He was curious, to put it simply, and he wanted to see for himself what the traders and elders talked about.

So that's why he was at the safehouse for the portal.

Meant to keep pigmen in, the door was tightly locked. However, it was locked from the outside, so the boy was able to open it quietly.

Right now, there were no pigmen.

So, silently, wincing when the door creaked, the boy stole down the steps, to the portal in the basement.

And his carefully thought out plan faltered on his first sight of the portal.

To him, the purple wisps of the substance that held you in place was just moving purple goo. And the obsidian seemed different than ever before, lit by the violet in such a way it seemed almost blue.

"Wow," the young boy breathed, eyes wide as they traveled around the portal, watching avidly for every movement.

Then he remembered the plan he'd made.

Smiling a bit now, breathing heavy and heart pounding fast, he tentatively touched the mass of purple with one index finger.

It wrapped around his finger, and when he pulled it back it shimmered away.

"Cool." And so, with a curiousity that couldn't be sated with stories, the boy stepped into the portal.

He didn't notice a small something fall from his neck and clatter to the ground.

When he stepped out again, he felt sick and stumbled to his knees. It was due to the portal, and he recognized what one of the elders had told him about it.

He still thought it was something cool.

And when the looked up from his kneeled position, the landscape did nothing to quell this opinion. For the place he was standing was near a lavafall, and the ocean of lava sprawled out before him spanned as far as he could see. When he looked up, he saw clusters of glowstone and the netherrack ceiling, sharp, with rough edges and delicate looking slopes that draped down to the ground in some areas.

The boy grinned and looked behind him. There was a literal mountain of crevices, and some quartz was dotted along the ground from time to time.

Without a single bit of hesitation, the boy dashed off to the nearest ledge going up and began to climb.

It was too early in the morning for Veronica to be up, but she had a feeling she'd want to be up. Because while she didn't think it could be real, she'd just had a dream of someone telling her that the child was gone. She didn't understand what that meant, but when she woke up she had an inkling.

That inkling was intuition.

When she opened the door to her son's room and found him missing, the resulting scream woke up half the village, and the consequent grumbles roused the other half. But within moments Veronica was out of the house, wailing that her boy was missing and where was he and he was gone and could someone find him where was he-

When it clicked into their heads as to what she was saying, they began freaking out.

A few of the other mothers went back into the house, locking their doors and diving into cellars and basements. Some grabbed their still-sleeping husbands' weapons, and pulled their kids close. The remaining went to comfort the hypervenilating woman on the ground, handing their kids to their stunned daddies.

The only ones really awake were the guards, who came from the edges of the village in alarm. When they realized what was happening, only one of them was still on edge- the boy's father, Michael.

Meanwhile, some of the other residents of the village weren't so happy to be woken up this late to discover that someone's kid was missing. "It was bound to happen," someone muttered.

"Like we can do anything."

"Kid probably ran off into the woods."

"Paper sword and all."

"Took half the cupboard with him!"

"Not to mention anything else."

"Anything he could _reach_."

"That's what I meant, darling."

And with each line, Veronica wailed louder, crying that he could be dead and gone.

But Michael remembered something his boy had been asking about for a week now outright.

So that was how he came back to Veronica less than five minutes later, a small handcarved, handpainted little diamond sword on a string.

"Guess where," one of the elders muttered.

Sighing, Michael nodded. "Kevin's in the Nether."

Someone swore as Veronica's screeching reached an unbearable level of volume, but no way in hell were they going to tell her to just _shut up_.

After a while, Kevin found himself at the top of the mountain, panting and grinning, sweat running down his face in rivulets. He took one of the bottles of water he had and took a draught, still smiling. He had the bottle because if there was one point every storyteller of the Nether made, it was that water was the one thing that could keep you alive. Lose your water and you lose your life.

Hence the foresight to bring water.

He surveyed the area, eyes lighting on a nearing ghast. It whined and began floating near him.

So the first thing Kevin decided to do? Taunt.

"Hey, you big puffy white fattie! Yeah, you!" He was still grinning, though now it looked a little more viscous. "Come over here and catch me if you can!" He laughed, thinking it was slow and all it could do was spit out little sparks of fire.

Thing was, he hadn't really listened to those parts of the story much.

So when it howled and sent him a fireball that was bigger than his head, the boy yelped and jumped out of the way, the sphere nearly hitting him anyways and burning off a few spokes of his hair.

The fireball impacted with the wall, blasting off a good half of it. And another fireball was fast to follow.

Now this place wasn't so fun anymore.

Wanting nothing more than to go back home and go to bed, Kevin tried to go down the mountain of sharp netherrack- but the ghast fired relentlessly, and he slipped, cutting his hand open with a sharp cry of pain. His blood sprayed the rock and him, and he whimperingly realized he'd have to hide. So after the ghast made an opening that could fit him, he spun into it and pressed himself as far away as he could.

For a while the ghast lingered close, but it flew back a little and went back to passively keening. But when Kevin tried stepping out a little, it whipped back around and made the crevice he was in a little deeper. So he waited for a while, pulling out his sword in the process, shaking violently.

When he gauged that it was too far away to see him properly, he shut his eyes and held his sword over his head, running for the portal below.

He got lucky the first time- the fireball completely missed him.

The second time, it made him trip and scream, and his face got sliced a little on the netherrack. Sobbing, he lifted his sword and tried to get up again.

He screeched when the next hit blasted his sword to smithereens.

It nearly hit his face, but thankfully it didn't. Swiftly the burning, destroyed piece of wood was dropped- only to light the netherrack below it, elicting a shriek from the boy, who jumped and ran, nearly leaping from each ledge.

Running as fast as he could, the boy dashed for the portal, finally off the mountain. The ghast decided he wasn't worth its time and gave up, whirling in a different direction and keening to _that_ side of the mountain.

Panting badly now, fighting for breath, Kevin leaned against the frame of the portal, lightheaded and ready to be home. He was just about to step in the portal, but first he wanted a drink.

And as soon as he touched the bottle in his pack-

 _Whoosh_.

He jumped and yelled as yet another fireball passed him, hitting the portal and breaking one of the obsidian blocks. The boy cried out as the purple vanished from the frame, and he jumped into it desperately.

"No, no, no no no no!" It refused to take him back, and he shuddered, trying to bite back tears. This time, though, it wasn't a ghast who sent the missile- it was a blaze, a blaze that was suspiciously close to him and was firing even faster than the ghast.

Hands over his head, the boy ran again, ducking into the first free boy-sized crack in the walls he found, shaking violently as his hand refused to stop bleeding.

So that's how he came to be huddled in the corner, crying and cradling his hand.

He whispered, "Dad?"

Michael, meanwhile, had just returned to the portal house to find it deactivated. The one thing he'd said before leaving was if the portal deactivated, don't reactivate it for at least a month. Veronica had tried to say something but he was already off.

He reached for the flint and steel he kept on him at all times, relighting it as fast as he could.

He was inside and tapping his foot against the one block, biting his lip. For all he knew, this was a sign that his boy hadn't been killed- worse, he could have been taken. There were plenty of legends about Herobrine, who came and killed whoever he wanted in the dead of night. A kidnapping was nowhere near out of the question.

So it was with a resolve of steel that Michael stepped into the Nether, eyes scanning for anything out of the ordinary.

He noticed instantly the smell of metallic, burning blood, and looked to the ground. Indeed, ther was a small trail of blood, and there-

The blaze that had been bothering his son, the one that was now pestering Michael.

He gritted his teeth and thought quietly to himself, _'A blaze can't kill me, not if I'm fast enough. Probably what he was thinking.'_

And then the ghast reappeared, deciding then was the time to forge alliances by smashing the portal behind him.

Michael thought, _'But a ghast would do it.'_

It was quiet now, and Kevin's crying had declined to a silent sniffling. He wiped his nose, lucky and relieved that he had managed to wrap his hand with some of the bandages he'd found in his pack. He wanted to go home now, he wanted his mom and his dad, and it was scary in here, and he didn't want to be here anymore and why had he even come in the first place-

It brought up voices.

"You can't go to the Nether," one girl said from the doorway of the orphanage, a frown on her face, brown hair in plaits, a simple ball tucked to her hip as she frowned at Kevin. "You're crazy. You'd die of fire or falling or something like that. There's a reason the elders keep the portal stuff away from the houses, you know."

Someone else floated up, another kid.

"Go to the Nether? Kev, that's crazy. What are you thinking? You've gotta be joking. There's no reason to go there, and besides, isn't it, like, blistering hot or something? You'd be hotter than we are now," the other boy said, wiping his forehead as they stood in the shade, wishing a respite from the summer heat. It had been a sweltering 99 degrees that day and by luck it hadn't broken a hundred...

And now, burning up as his wounds became so hot the blood dried before it reached the outside- the scabs had long since formed, and they were solid as rock- Kevin sat on the inside of his hidey hole, wishing for nothing other than to go home. He was hurt and he wanted his family.

At first, he shrunk back when he heard scraping outside. He didn't know what it could be, but considering what he'd seen so far, he didn't want to know.

Then, "Kev?"

He peeked out to see his dad's face.

"Dad!"

Before Michael could realize it, his son had leaped into his arms, whimpering that he wanted to go home. When he did, though, his sword lowered, and he sighed.

"Alright. Let's go home."

A humming came from his son, who now knew he was safe again, and was falling asleep. Chuckling to himself the father hefted the boy further onto his shoulder, and headed back to the portal-

Then remembered.

Ah, yes, it'd been shattered by a ghast. And if he remembered right, it was not to be reactivated for a month. Because while Michael had a flint and steel to relight the portal, he didn't have any obsidian to rebuild it with or any water to _make_ obsidian- and even if he did he didn't have his pickaxe. He thought. He hadn't realized it was strapped to his son's pack, sticking out ever so slightly.

Suddenly concerned, he stopped and slid Kevin softly off his shoulder, checking his wounds. They were shallow, and already thickly scabbed, but the wounds themselves weren't clean and one already looked like it was starting to have infection.

Biting his lip, Michael picked his back up, and headed for the portal frame again.

Only to find it fixed and activated.

Blinking in disbelief, he looked around, surprised. There was no way...

He waited, but saw no one.

So it was with a mixture of relief and confusion that he stepped back through, to the screams and fusses of Veronica and the thoughts of how the portal had been fixed.

The answer sat on the other side of the portal, white eyes blinking once before stepping back and vanishing into the landscape.

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A/N: This was fun to write, in all honesty, and I plan to (as soon as I can) make both this little area and Hero's castle in the very distant future. I hope that will be sometime next week, because after Tuesday of this writing I've got no school until the next Monday (the 30th). And by then I'll hopefully have my NaNo done (although by now that's nearly hopeless, probably just have to continue another year. I'll probably use this story for next year ;-;)

So here's the original stuffles for this thing:

 _-It wasn't just because of the mobs. Usually enough they don't go out in my universe, but it's still often enough to be a problem. No, it's partially because of the village kids and trader's kids. The kids hear more than enough interesting stories (or so they think) of the Nether. So let's say about twenty years back, the Nether portal was in the village. One of the kids decided to take his wooden sword and an apple and dive in. About an hour later, the entire village is up, and the kid's dad finds this kid's favorite toy that fell out of his little pack, and the dad realizes his kid is in the Nether. Exciting, right?_

 _And while the village is freaking out, the kid himself thinks he's having fun until he sees a ghast, and it burns his sword. Then the kid runs into a blaze, and ends up lost running from it. He is found by his dad eventually, and when they get back to the Overworld, they destroy the portal. But when it's needed again, they decide to put it a mile from town, since none of the kids could walk half that much._

Yepples. And I'm going to sleep naow...Maybe.

Night :)


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